or in
Ran on embattell’d Armies clad in Iron,
than it is in
We sweetly curtsied each to each
And deftly danced a saraband.
Nor is it always the case that the movement takes its cue from the sense. It is often a commentary on the sense and sometimes may qualify it, as when the resistless strength of Coriolanus in battle is given an appearance of dreadful ease by the leisureliness of the description,
Death, that dark spirit, in’s nervy arm doth lie
Which being advanc’d declines, and then men die.
Movement in poetry deserves at least as much study as onomatopœia.
This account, of course, by no means covers all the ways by which metre takes effect in poetry. The fact that we appropriately use such words as ‘lulling’, ‘stirring’, ‘solemn’, ‘pensive’, ‘gay’ in describing metres is an indication of their power more directly to control emotion. But the more general effects are more important. Through its very appearance of artificiality metre produces in the highest degree the ‘frame’ effect, isolating the poetic experience from the accidents and irrelevancies of everyday existence. We have seen in Chapter X how necessary this isolation is and how easily it may be mistaken for a difference in kind. Much which in prose would be too personal or too insistent, which might awaken irrelevant conjectures or might ‘overstep itself’ is managed without disaster in verse. There are, it is true, equivalent resources in prose—irony, for example, very frequently has this effect—but their scope is far more limited. Metre for the most difficult and most delicate utterances is the all but inevitable means.
CHAPTER XVIII
On Looking at a Picture
Hived in our bosoms like the bag o’ the bee,
Think’st thou the honey with those objects grew?